Preaching is to much avail, but practice is far more effective. A godly life is the strongest argument you can offer the skeptic.
If you think practicing what you preach is rough, just try preaching what you practice.
I preached as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men.
The clergyman is expected to be a kind of human Sunday.
The world looks at preachers out of church to know what they mean in it.
He preaches well that lives well.
Sermons remain one of the last forms of public discourse where it is culturally forbidden to talk back.
Preaching is the expression of moral sentiments applied to the duties of life.
The good rain, like a bad preacher, does not know when to leave off.
Every accent, every emphasis, every modulation of voice, was so perfectly well turned and well placed, that, without being interested in the subject, one could not help being pleased with the discourse; a pleasure of much the same kind with that received from an excellent piece of music. This is an advantage itinerant preachers have over those who are stationary, as the latter can not well improve their delivery of a sermon by so many rehearsals.
I'd rather see a sermon than hear one any day; I'd rather one should walk with me than merely tell the way: The eye's a better pupil and more willing than the ear, fine counsel is confusing, but example's always clear.
A man who is good enough to go to heaven is not good enough to be a clergyman.
Go into the street, and give one man a lecture on morality, and another a shilling, and see which will respect you most.
It is hardly to be believed how spiritual reflections when mixed with a little physics can hold people's attention and give them a livelier idea of God than do the often ill-applied examples of his wrath.
Preaching is heady wine. It is pleasant to tell people where they get off.
Some plague the people with too long sermons; for the faculty of listening is a tender thing, and soon becomes weary and satiated.
Preach in the name of God. The learned will smile; ask the learned what they have done for their country. The priests will excommunicate you; say to the priests that you know God better than all of them together do, and that between God and His law you have no need of any intermediary. The people will understand you, and repeat with you: We believe in God the Father, who is Intelligence and Love, Creator and Teacher of Humanity. And in this saying you and the People will conquer.
One filled with joy preaches without preaching.
The Christian ministry is the worst of all trades, but the best of all professions.
If the truth were known, many sermons are prepared and preached with more regard for the sermon than the souls of the hearers.
There are three things that can destroy a preacher, the glory, the gold, and the girls.
The worst behaved students turn out to be the most pious preachers.
When it's foggy in the pulpit it's cloudy in the pew.
One man practicing sportsmanship is far better than fifty preaching it.
I just wanted to be an ordinary parish priest.
To preach long, loud, and Damnation, is the way to be cried up. We love a man that damns us, and we run after him again to save us.
But, good my brother, do not, as some ungracious pastors do. Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven whilst like a puffed and reckless libertine himself the primrose path of dalliance treads and wrecks not his own.
That we should practice what we preach is generally admitted; but anyone who preaches what he and his hearers practice must incur the gravest moral disapprobation.
The object of preaching is to constantly remind mankind of what they keep forgetting; not to supply the intellect, but to fortify the feebleness of human resolutions.
Few sinners are saved after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.
A minister asked a little boy how to get to the Post Office. After the little boy told him, the minister said, Why don't you come to church tonight? I'm giving instructions on how to get to heaven. After thinking a minute, the boy replied, I don't think so. You don't even know how to get to the Post Office.